


That Dizzy Edge

by doublejoint



Category: One Piece
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28672251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: Maybe this is just how a close platonic friendship is supposed to be, and Hina doesn’t know that because she’s never had a friend as close as him, never had a lover she’d been really close with at all.
Relationships: Hina/Smoker (One Piece)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	That Dizzy Edge

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Just Like Heaven" by The Cure.

Hina flicks her lighter once, twice, three times; finally it lights, the flame catching the edge of her knuckle and burning out as she releases the tab. She hisses, the cigarette bobbing between her teeth, and leans up against Smoker, not quite tall enough to light her cigarette on his cigar unless he obliges. She knows he will; he always does, one of the millions of favors passed between them, not that either of them is keeping score. It’s impossible to add them up at this rate, anyway, all the times she’d bailed him out when they were younger, all the times he’d held her hair while she’d vomited, the one time she’d been so hungover she couldn’t see straight and felt like she was going to be seasick but he’d held steady, next to her. He used to get lost, get locked out of his room; she’d guide him back, lend him a hairpin to pick the lock or do it for him; he’s always got a light or a lit cigar, always enough to spare her some.

Hina takes a drag on the cigarette, careful not to keep leaning right up against Smoker, not to push too much. He’ll let her; that’s the problem. He lets her drag him to bars, hold herself steady against him, make him pay for another round of shots, not out of some sense of duty or thinking that he owes her (he wouldn’t, and if he did she’d have clocked him in the teeth, logia or no). He’ll give her room to do things, let her push over the edge, and the only thing holding her back is her own restraint, worn thin by the stress of her job and her subordinates and of having lost count of the number of days since she’d last had shore leave, her civilian clothes fitting her all wrong, like she shouldn’t be in them. But if she didn’t have restraint, wits, the ability to hold herself back, to knot the ropes back up as they tear themselves apart, she’d never have made it this far in the Marines, and never this far as Smoker’s friend. She would have told him how she’d felt long ago, and that would have been that.

Smoker would be nice about it, and Hina wouldn’t be able to bear it; he wouldn’t pity her and he wouldn’t be too mad; he’d just ask her why she’d bring it up, or say nothing, and she’d still feel humiliated, like coming in last on the fitness test, like getting a demerit in front of all the other recruits, a slap in the face stinging worse than any of the times she’s burned her own fingers, on lighters and on ropes and on candles, worse than her throat burns after three shots in a row. She stubs her cigarette out on the ashtray on the bar, calls out to the bartender, laughs and tosses her hair, tilts her head to look at Smoker.

“You drink, too.”

“Fine.”

She pays this time, sliding the bills across to the bartender, leaning over so he can see her tits nearly fall out of her shirt, and Smoker doesn’t even register it (of course he wouldn’t). She grabs two shots for herself, pinches a third between her fingers and holds it out to Smoker. He takes it, and she watches as he tips it down his throat, cigars still lighted in the other corner of his mouth. The shot glass is comically undersized in his hand, as if it belongs to a doll, and sometimes Hina wishes she were his size just so she could drink more, but then it would take longer for her to get drunk, longer for her to push herself too far, longer for her to recover. She tips her own glasses down her throat in one go and the alcohol stings her lips, the best medicine. Can he see her fit two shot glasses between her lips? Should that have any effect, anyway, when they’re not horny teenagers straight out of basic training and he’s seen her do this many times before? 

Maybe they’re getting too old for this. Maybe she needs some water. Maybe she ought to just accept that this will never happen, but--if Smoker knows (and how can he not, by now?) then why is he humoring her? Why does he let her drag him to bar after bar if he’s going to fall in love with someone else someday, or rise too high for her in the Marines for their schedules to match up longer than an hour or two? This is what friends do, but what she wants isn’t strictly friendship, and--Smoker knows her, knows the way she doesn’t lean into anyone else like this, the way she flirts casually with people but never with him, the way--but, if he knows, and he feels that way too, then shouldn’t she know? Maybe this is just how a close platonic friendship is supposed to be, and Hina doesn’t know that because she’s never had a friend as close as him, never had a lover she’d been really close with at all. Maybe she’s just a fool, and that’s why she can’t tell him. 

She should order more shots; she always does, until she has the veneer of incoherency, until she’s too sick to talk or remember what she’s been able to force out of her vocal cords. She straightens up and the bar is only tilting slightly, a half-torpedoed ship. She heads for the exit, listing to one side, tottering on her heels, placing her cigarette back into her mouth, methodical, normal. She looks normal; no one is looking at her. Her lighter’s in the pocket of her jacket; she can feel it but can’t feel, can’t remember where the damn pocket opens. She has it; it’s upside down; it won’t turn on. 

Smoker is there, as if appearing out of nowhere, and maybe he did, but he wouldn’t like this, Hina decides. She puts her lighter back into her pocket, carefully, patting the pocket afterward to make sure it hasn’t fallen off. She doesn’t lean up to Smoker, but she thinks about it, about bypassing the cigar. 

He doesn’t ask if she’s okay, and he’s right next to her, warm, his hand so much larger than hers, could hold two shot glasses between each pair of fingers, probably--she tugs on it; he won’t lean down until she leans up. So she does, but swerves to the side, meets his mouth with hers, reaches for his shoulder with her free hand to steady herself on her toes--fuck, her feet really hurt. 

She forgets to light her cigarette the way back down, sways on her feet and he doesn’t catch her, and shit. It was the wrong thing to do, but she doesn’t want to apologize; they can’t forget it and she can’t take it back and neither one of them has ever apologized, and if they start now, with this, that’s giving ground to a rift, pulling them apart like tectonic plates. She is still holding his hand, but she’d have to be the one to rescue him if they were sucked under the water. 

“Please,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Don’t take advantage of my feelings.”

Hina’s too drunk for this, too drunk to have done this in the first place, probably; she can’t tell if he means advantage of his friendship or an advantage she couldn’t take due to not not reciprocating, so she just stares at him. He stares back.

“You—” Hina starts, then stops, breathes. “Hina wasn’t taking advantage; Hina would never--what Hina feels is genuine, so don’t do what you wouldn’t want to.”

(Is she making sense? Smoker has always been able to make sense of her, but Hina’s always been able to make sense of him, and now she can’t, fuck.)

“If you want to kiss, we should kiss,” Hina says, then, “I want to.”

“Because—?”

“Because you’re you.”

(She can’t make the words what she wants them to be, but, she thinks, he gets her point, gets her, takes his cigars out of his mouth, and her cigarette from hers, and kisses her, more properly, and a little clunky because she’s grabbing onto him a little tighter, but--the world has righted itself; they’re in lockstep, keeping the same time, and they’ll be able to sort it out more when they’re sober.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
